Chess came to Europe from
the Islamic Empire. People began play chess
in Europe toward the end of the Middle Ages, and after paper
reached Europe from China, playing cards also began to appear in the later
Middle Ages.

We also see more children's toys from this time: whistles
and little dishes and dolls. People didn't sit still all the time- they liked to go swimming outside in ponds and rivers, too.

Swimming in a pond (Tres Riches Heures du duc de Berry, 1400s)

As for spectator sports, the gladiatorial
games of the Roman Empire ended with the fall
of Rome. In the Christian
era, men no longer fought men to the death in the arenas.
But many similar entertainments survived and flourished. In the old amphitheaters,
many of which still continued to be used, men continued to fight animals:
bears and bulls were the most popular
of these, because they were the most dangerous. You can still see bull-fights
today in Spain (and in Mexico), and they are still fought in amphitheaters.
And people who had been convicted of crimes continued to be executed as
entertainment.

In the old circuses,
also, horse-racing and chariot-racing
continued to be popular for a long time. This was especially true in Constantinople,
where the charioteers (the drivers) were divided into teams (the Blues,
the Greens, the Whites, and the Reds, though the Blues and the Greens were
the most important) and which team you rooted for was tied to your politics
and your religion, and often led to violent riots and murders in the circus
and in the streets. But on a smaller scale, horse-racing continued in Spain
and Italy also, throughout the Early Medieval period. You can still see
a medieval horse-race today at the Palio in Siena, which is held every year.

Instead of the old gladiatorial
combats, the medieval world introduced the tournament, in which armed
and armored knights
fought each other for prizes, and for the entertainment of the king
and queen and the public. Tournaments were different from the old gladiatorial
games in two ways. First, they were not intended to end in death, though
men did sometimes get killed anyway. Second, tournaments were fought by rich men,
not by slaves and poor men. Still, they presented men fighting each other
for entertainment, just as the older gladiatorial games had.

These tournaments were also a lot like the popular Islamic sport of polo,
which was invented in Uzbekistan around the time of the Parthians,
became common in West Asia around 800 BC, in the time of the Abbasid
Empire. It might be the popularity of polo that encouraged the people
who organized tournaments to emphasize fighting on horseback, rather than
on foot as the gladiators did.